With all the great figures
coming out from DC Direct, we sometimes forget that there are still some
nice Toybiz/Marvel items popping up. Last week the new Marvel
History, The Dark Side figures snuck into comic shops, taking lots of
folks by surprise.

This is a set of
four characters, most of which we have never seen in figure form
before. There's Doctor Strange (and yes, he we've seen before but
not in this form), Man-thing, Dorammu and Vermin. My local comic
shop is selling them for $9.99. You can think of these as
mini-Famous Covers, with a small card included showing cover artwork for
each character.

Packaging - ***1/2
As bubble cards go, these are pretty nice. The graphics are good,
there are decent bios, and the overall feel is appropriately spooky.

Sculpt - ***1/2
Toybiz can do great sculpting when they really set their minds to
it. Some of these figures are better than others - Vermin is top
notch, while Dorammu is the weakest of the bunch - but overall the
sculpting on the figures and accessories is great.

Value - ***
These figures are certainly a better buy than the higher priced DCD
figures. But I still hate paying this comic shop premium - these
figures should really be selling for $7-$8 each. You can't complain
too much though, since it's unlikely we'd ever see some of the character
choices if they were selling only through the mass market retailers.

Articulation - ***1/2
All four figures sport the pretty standard Toybiz articulation - neck,
ball jointed shoulders, elbows, knees, hips, ankles, waist...while this is
no surprise for a Toybiz figure, it beats the pants off some of the
current comic shop competition.

Accessories - ***1/2
Each character comes with one or more very cool accessories, well tailored
to his reality. I particularly like Vermin's fire hydrant. Each
character also comes with a character card showing artwork from a well
known comic cover.

Paint - ***1/2
The paint application on all the figures I saw was quite good, once again
particularly Vermin and Man-Thing. Be picky though, because Toybiz
is well known for having paint ops problems.

Overall - ***1/2
If I were only to buy one, it would be Man-Thing, but that's because he's
always been a major favorite of mine. Dorammu is certainly the
weakest of the bunch, and wouldn't rate better than a **1/2 on his
own. Vermin and Strange are also excellent, however, and overall
it's a strong set.

It's nice to see Toybiz trying to get back
in the game with figures like these and the recent Spiderman Classics.